I was a skeptic. I really didn't believe that they would make that big a difference for me, so I didn't buy them. That was until I was told no running for 8 weeks (this past February) due to some really bad shin splints. My coach said try them. With a money back guarantee what's the risk. So I put a pair on, and my workout schedule was rewritten with Power Cranks in the place of running. I still cycled and swam as usual. PCs just replaced running. My first race I was actually faster in the run. I had only run a few times prior and expected to be really slow. I was pretty amazed.

So my point is this. They are a training tool, that if used properly can make you faster. They are not the only way to train or achieve performance gains. They did help me when I needed it,and I'm going to stick with them. I'm not at the point where I've noticed hugh leaps in my cycling times, but there is no denying the fact that PCs aided in the recovery of my shin splints by making me pull the pedals up (beats sitting on the work-bench lifting paint cans with your toes), and they did help my run time.

I've been commuting to work on them for about a month now, and actually like riding them. For me they are worth the money. Anything that will help my lack luster run time without causing more injury is a good piece of gear in my opinion. Speaking of commuting, looking at the clock it appears to be time to get on my PCs and head back to the ranch.

Just my $0.02.

Joel

yes rip, those powerhouses from the OTC do so routinely whup on the former mapei riders, don't they?

I do not have PC's, but am strongly considering them. The arguements by several posters here, including (I think) Francois and Yaquicarbo and others, that they had been riding and training for years before PC's and have dramtically improved their cycling since, but that it took months may well be a placebo effect. And, it might be less related to hip flexors, which are admitted pretty weak when already flexed, and more related to increased hamstring firing from5:00-8:00, or earlier quad firing, say 11:00 instead of 1:00

Even if it is a placebo effect, placebo effect is real and is consistently more effective than no treatment. But, even if the effect is that it one trains harder or better and could achieve the same benefit without them, the apparent fact that it is achieved is still a benefit. Music in earphones or meditation might do the same, and it might be a placebo, but that does mean it is not beneficial to the individual's training.

The faster running before cycling benefit is almost counterintuitive, but apparently consistent, and very intriguing.

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Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

"Friel, who have basic misunderstandings of exercise phys"

________

What aspects of Friel's stuff do you find questionable. FWIW, I'm not trying to troll, just curious as to what I should be particularly skeptical about, in your opinion, as I read through his book (a recent purchase).

T2, I do have some training "drills" that has seemed to work for me.



Ride a tandem with a 5 or 7 year old...... OR ride a triplet with both of them one there. Of course they will be too busy fighting each other to provide much help, but that will only add to your workout. Just wait until you are huffing and puffing up the hill, and one of them will say "....daddy why are we going so slow.....?" Of course then they will immediately start poking their brother (or sister) after (strike that) WHILE they ask you why are we so slow........Then you can do a ride in the middle of July/August. You will get off the bike tired very sweaty after completing 50 miles on this bike (tandem or triplet).....AND THEN.... get this......."daddy why are you sweating so much...(as he/she takes off their helmet, to reveal his dry hair).....I'm not weating at all...!!!!" All you can do is smile........ Of course I am much slower lately while doing this. Something about toating a 60# bike with 100#'s of kids tends to do that to you. Of course when I hop on the Softride it seems like these drills are paying off ;-D

Seriously it works, you should try it. In case you have no kids, you may substitute the neighbor's kids, girlfriend, wife, significant other........ OK, I'm sorry. I just couldn't resist, but I'm sure other tandem/triplet riders would agree with me.



Your question is valid and so are many of the points given. If I was you I would proceed with your drills for now. Then why not borrow your friends PC's during the off season?

funny you mention that rip - just what was the point over the OTC ordering or not ordering some again?

if you truly do not see some significance in the best road team over the past decade seeing use and benefit for PC's i guess that your conclusion to draw. personally i tend to think those fellows might know a thing or two about what is effective and what is not. at least, i might think so enuf to challenge, and then actually try out and see for myself if these things might be so for me - or - i could just sit at my computer and spout and naysay based on no real first hand knowledge whatsoever and expect ( inexplicably ) that people will think i know what i am talking about. we all make these choice for ourselves, i guess.

RIP wrote: "I gather you never asked anybody at the OTC why they didn't order a slew of your cranks, huh Frank? "

Actually, I sent one of my very first pairs to Jeff Broker many years ago. I got back a letter about them being legal to use in a race and we had a little back and forth about how to use them (he claimed, if I remember right, he couldn't use them because of a back problem). Several years later one of my athletes told me they were still in a box there.

One thing I have come to learn is that someone from outside of cycling can't tell those "inside" anything. Why don't you ask them why they haven't ordered a slew of them? I don't have the time or care since a fair number of their Olympians will have trained on them anyhow (at least some), not from their efforts but from mine and the efforts of the individual athletes and their coaches.

Frank

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

Frank,

You may be interested to know that one-legged drills were invented long before powercranks. So, it was in fact possible to train this way before you invented powercranks.

Be that as it may, I am sure riding around on PC's constantly is a different training stimulus than doing even quite a bit of one legged drills, so:

Once you have repeated said studies utilizing PC's, as you suggest you are, and have those results printed in a peer-reviewed scientific publication, I will absolutely positively eat my words and proclaim the benefits of powercranks to all who will listen. Until that time, we have a lot of data that shows why PC's should NOT work, and little data that they SHOULD or DO work (barring anecodtal evidence, which as a man of science you must dismiss). You seem to be trying to remedy that situation, and I think that is excellent. Question: Would we see any negative results posted by you? It obviously would not be to your benefit, but in the interest of science...

In the said studies, one of the things that was shown was that a rounder pedal stroke and even unweighting of the pedals seemed to be the natural progression to becoming an elite rider. However, this progression was neither nessecary nor sufficient to produce success as a rider, increased power, etc. So, you are very specifically training something that was shown not to matter...shouldn't we have seen a benefit in those riders who were able to "pull up" or "unweight more"? Of course, you will argue that PC riders will be able to pull up more, and that the difference will be enough to reach statistical significance. Again, we will have to wait for your experiments, but I would be really interested to see results.



Brodsky

Rip writes: "I did."

I feel like this is American Idol, we will get the scoop after the commercial.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

I don't actually have the specifics of when everything fires, but was using that as an example. Maybe they fire sooner or harder, maybe they don't.

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Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

Even though one legged drills have been around for a long time doing all of your pedaling one legged has not and doing both legs at the same time one legged has not (this last aspect help a tad with right left coordination).

I don't deny people have been trying to learn to do this for a long time. I just think it has been pretty much impossible for most to do until PC's. Now there are some exceptions. Alan Larsen, who has won RAAM a few times got on the PC's at Seattle Bike show this year and was able to ride for 20 minutes at a cadence of 90, and could have gone longer. Still, he is now training on them and has written back about them, "I wish I knew about these before".

Oh, and there was a study in a peer reviewed journal where we increased the efficiency of trained cyclists 10% in 6 weeks over the non-PC group. Link to the reference is on the website. I am sure if there was a study showing they didn't work someone would post it. There is a study just starting at Duke, look for the results (I think they are doing cycling and running benefit first, not rehabilitation benefit, don't know as I haven't seen the protocol). Since I don't believe there is a study showing negative or no benefit to the cranks, this might explain this dearth. Why don't you try to prove this non-effect?

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

How about "muscular endurance" versus "endurance" for one?

The best thing about a Placebo is: it can make you feel any way you want. (Steve Martin, circa 1980).

If you don't think Powercranks are "the thing" for you, that's fine! Train another way....there are lots of training ideas out there.

If you don't think Powercranks are "the thing" for you, and you try them anyway just to prove they aren't "the thing", you might end up keeping them and eating your words (right, ttn?).

Even if you are certain that Powercranks are not only NOT "the thing" for anyone to try, but that the inventor and all the others that have been fooled by the contraptions are actually fools...so what? Just because you don't agree with, nor understand what the proponents of Powercranks have experienced and/or understood, it certainly is no skin off of your nose....even if you are right, even if Powercranks are at best only a placebo. You stand to gain nothing even if you are right, except to say "I told you so!" Wow. Such a lofty goal....

This arguing stuff is really pointless. The guarantee...now extended to 90 days, should be enough (for anyone that is curious) to actually try them for themselves to determine if PowerCranks yield significant benefits; tangible or intangible, real or imagined, riding and/or running. If not, send them back and even tell us why they didn't seem worth it to you. If you don't at least try them, you don't have firm enough ground to stand on to discredit them.

I had the opportunity to actually ask Lance Armstrong what he thought about Powercranks, in a face-to-face conversation some time ago. It was a personal conversation, and one I will keep private, as it was meant to be. I will only say this...I have trained on PowerCranks and plan to continue to use PowerCranks in some manner....partly because of "the" conversation, but mostly because of my experience with them. Stick that in your book of theory, science, and name dropping. If that isn't a good enough reason for someone to try them, that's fine and dandy with me. Furthermore, if a person has no significant experience with PowerCranks, their opinion about PowerCranks holds no weight to me.

If you want to know about rockets, talk to rocket engineers. If you want to know about math and vector forces, talk to mathematicians and physicists. If you want to know theories of exercise physiology, talk to exercise physiologists. But, if you want to know about PowerCranks...just freakin' ride them for yourself. All others are just guessing regarding something about which they really aren't qualified to evaluate. Over and out.

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Quid quid latine dictum sit altum videtur
(That which is said in Latin sounds profound)

As someone below pointed out...one example is muscular endurance vs. endurance. He seems to make up meaningless terms. There is one set of terms that should be used so that everyone understands what each other is talking about: the scientific terms. Making up terms may serve to differentiate his particular training programs from others, but they have no real meaning in terms of physiology. The average person doesn't know this sort of thing, most likely, but if someone wants to be held up as an "expert" of some kind, you ought to be aware of these things.

His advocating strength training is another point. Carmichael is guilty of this as well. Now there is in fact some literature that supports strength training. The studies that show benefits of weights were largely done in UNTRAINED people, for whom any training will improve their fitness. There just isn't any proveable benefit to sterngth work, even his "sport specific" strength work, in athletes who have been training at their sport for any length of time. I don't care who does it, be it the guy down the street or an olympic champion. The overriding principle of physiology is specificity of training. If you want to climb at a cadence of 50 with a ridculous gear, you will get better at that. You should not expect that it will make you better if you try to climb at a cadence of 90.

I'm sorry I don't have more time to write, as these discussions are important to have. I'm working a lot of overtime right now. But these points can serve as starting places for your own reading. Don;t believe it because me or anyone else says it is so. Investigate yourself using a phys text and medline. there is a lot of info out there and you will be surprised how much of it certain popular authors don't know.

I don't understand the criticism. I haven't read the book but because he might differentiate between "muscular" endurance from some other type of endurance, like psychological endurance required to do an IM, when talking to non-scientists doesn't bother me. Further, it just seems he interprets the data differently than you when talking about strength training. Sounds more like sour grapes and a difference in interpretaion of the data than real criticisms of the science, to me. Why don't you write your own book or start your own coaching empire then we can all do it the correct way, using your interpretation of the contradictory data.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

Maybe Friel is trying to differentiate it from bone endurance.

One time, in a similar discussion about ankling, I had them going for awhile by promoting my "toeing" technique as an evolution of ankling. I first convinced them that toes were strong because you can stand on your tippy toes and then talked about how I quit training altogether because this technique alone allowed me to simply ride off the front of Pro/1/2 races. Also, you had to use SPD sandals because conventional cycling shoes are obviously too rigid.

Brodsky wrote: Don;t believe it because me or anyone else says it is so. Investigate yourself using a phys text and medline. there is a lot of info out there and you will be surprised how much of it certain popular authors don't know.

Very good recommendation, albeit incomplete. There are literally truckloads of pertinent information to be gleaned on these subjects. But, not ALL of the information is found using a physiology text and medline....you can read all you like about pole vaulting, but until you do it, you won't understand it the way a good pole vaulter understands it. Same with many other subjects....including the one in this thread.

By the way, I'm not surprised at all about how much certain popular authors don't know. Nor am I surprised about how much PhD's DON'T know about their own field of study...and I'd venture to say that those with PhD's that realize they don't "know it all" are MUCH smarter than the PhD's that think they do know it all. I also don't trust anyone that relies solely upon medline or Pubmed or any other conglomeration of published papers for the totality, even majority, of their formed opinions...it's an incomplete list at best, often contradictory, and often: proven wrong over time.

That's the way science is. In over 25 years of being a scientist, I can tell you there is a lot of misinformation in peer-reviewed publications, as well as published texts...I'm not saying peer-review isn't better than non-peer-reviewed garbage, I'm just saying peer-review doesn't equate to "Truth". "Peer-reviewed" just means that: at some time, a bunch of people approved something to be published that seemed to be done in an acceptable manner. Again, it doesn't make it Truth.

Muscular endurance, endurance, even bone endurance (yes, there IS such a thing as bone endurance...ever consider it under the context of a stress fracture?)...they are all correct terms if used in a certain context. They are all incorrect if used in other contexts. It doesn't really matter that much.

Some people believe Cardiac Output, or Lung function are the limiting factors to exercise. Others believe it is local muscle cell function and or specifics of the Mitochondrial environment that is the limiter to exercise...doesn't matter much...both groups probably train in similar manners. Depending upon the situation, and the test used to observe the situation (although observing a test is always fraught with the problem of: the observer misinterprets the result of the test because THAT is what observers do...interpret results, not "find the Truth"), both groups can claim their idea is some semblance of the Truth. Doesn't matter....train one way, see what happens. Train another way, see what happens. The Truth is found somewhere in the DOING.

There are at least two categories of scientists: Those that realize the more they know, the more they realize they don't know; Or, those that think their expanding base of knowledge is actually making them more complete, rather than leaving them with more questions.

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Quid quid latine dictum sit altum videtur
(That which is said in Latin sounds profound)

on a related note, yaqui . . . last night i mentioned this thread to the wife. she herself has a set of PC's, but uses them only sparingly. when i asked why that is she said " well yeah obviously they " work" , that is not the point. i don't really care all that much how fast i ride a bicycle - mostly i am happy with how i am now - you're a freak for riding them all the time". gotta love the female ability to cut thru the crap sometimes, no?

anyway, last nite she went to point out that much of the content of the thread soundly hauntingly familiar to the (very) old business that went down back when skate style xc skiing appeared. before that medal by the marathon-skating bill koch, and even for a good time afterwords there was much debate. interestingly, it took the same basic lines as the PC one thus far - with guys who actually went outdoors and learned to skate raving, and those who didn't offering overworded article after no longer relevant study after prissy smug " in-the-know" snipe as to why skating could never work.

the same arguments were seen. it wasn't biomechanically proper. the body couldn't physiolgically do what we were asking it to do. the old way was more efficient. and of course my personal favorite - it was a placebo effect at work. possibly one or two of them actually DID try a few faultering skate strides and sucked at it - and instead of putting in the time returned to their desk with renewed vigor to pontificate as to why skating would never work, and all those guys you see flying around the lake are "fooling themselves".

none of this mattered to those of us out on the frozen lakes or golf courses or glaciers. sometimes it wasn't pretty, and sometimes we suffered, and sometimes we just made stupid errors ( poles up past your forehead . . . . ). but we knew we were going faster with less effort and any fool who ould shut up and look out the window, at least, could see that if he had a mind to. you know, the xc crowd and the tri-head crowd are similar. lots of over educated dudes in a participatory activity. within that subset are always, i guess, gonna be guys who prefer to try to impress others with their self baked knowledge of the sport, as opposed to simply going out and enjoying or progressing it. there will always be prissy little-girl smug yayhoos like that red-shoe guy stroking himself over his smuggness , trying to wrap it in some pathetic shell/veil of "science" when, as yaqui points out - it is nothing of the sort.

none of this should matter to those who are out on the snow, so to speak. as the wife concluded " obviously none of those guys know what they are talking about, just like the old time skiiers. why would anybody listen to them, when you could just go ski and see for yourself?"

Bravo!!!

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

t-t-n wrote: "i guess, gonna be guys who prefer to try to impress others with their self baked knowledge of the sport, as opposed to simply going out and enjoying or progressing it."

I agree with this statement and I also don't ever want to think of myself as a stick in the mud. My thinking on this has been more along the lines of what Brian said way back in the thread that there is always something in every magazine that promises to make you faster, stronger, leaner you name it. Nothing much about hard work and consistency...you know just putting in the time. So I guess I have simply been trying to advocate the tried and proven means of improvement rather than hype. I think we can all agree, even you Frank, that some of the claims of improvement have been pretty far fetched to say the least. Didn't somebody say PC's made them taller (joke).

That said though, I must admit I am still curious. If I wasn't why would I care to get this discussion going in the first place. Didn't you act like you weren't interested in that girl in school...but you were! At any rate you have made sound points, at least to me, to give them a try and make a call after a fair trial. Most likely I will wait until base to do so given the fact that I am in the race season but I intend to give them a shot.